Jeff Mohamed blogs about birds and other wildlife in the Houston area - and occasionally farther afield.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

MLK Day Birding

.I took advantage of the MLK holiday to spend a couple of hours at Kleb Woods.When I arrived, the air was absolutely filled with the calls and songs of common residents, such as Blue Jays, Red-bellied Woodpeckers and Northern Cardinals (below).

At the top of one tree, several Tufted Titmice were singing their hearts out.

The many seed-feeders were attracting large numbers of American Goldfinches while in some places the ground was swarming with Chipping Sparrows (below).

I finally saw my very first Downy Woodpecker of 2015, a bird I usually see in our yards virtually every day of the year. Unfortunately, this one didn't hang around for a photograph. The same was true of a flock of Scaly-breasted Munias, another new year bird.At HomeBack at home I was surprised to find that our yards were busy. I had thought the bad weather of the first two weeks of 2015 would have brought them to our feeders but very few turned up until this weekend's better weather.The feeders were busy with Chipping Sparrows, Carolina Chickadees, Orange-crowned Warblers and a Ruby-crowned Kinglet while the birdbath brought in several Yellow-rumped Warblers and a Northern Mockingbird. Our solitary thistle sock-feeder finally caught the attention of a couple of American Goldfinches.

There weren't any American Robins or Cedar Waxwings around but an Eastern Bluebird certainly made a nice showing against the blue sky.

Originally from Carlisle in northern England, I moved to San Francisco with my American wife Deanne in 1990. In 2002 we moved to Texas. In August 2016 we moved to Barcelona, Spain.
Before going to the US, I had lived in London, Paris, Beirut, Tripoli (Libya) and Madrid.